Savannah Guthrie Helps Seth Meyers Prepare for ‘Worst Guests’

The media blitz for Seth Meyers has included a THR cover story, weekend coverage in the New York Times and down-the-hall air time this morning on Today. Tonight, it’s finally time for the affable Weekend Update anchor to show his Studio 8G stuff.

Today co-host Savannah Guthrie wins the award for most practical bit of pre-show conversation. In the clip above, she pretends to be a nightmare Late Night guest so as to help Meyers see how he might deal with a Joaquin Phoenix-Letterman scenario.

Meanwhile, the New York Observer‘s Drew Grant, in his Q&A, brought up a separate, very good point about Meyers entering talk show guest territory:

Observer: Your first couple of nights have an amazing lineup: Kanye West, Lena Dunham, Joe Biden. All three have been satirized on SNL; how do you approach interviewing the real-life versions of people you’ve had parodied?

SM: I’ve been lucky enough to meet Lena a few times, and Kanye has come through SNL over the years, though this is certainly the first time I’ve met with either of them on television. You can’t gear up for it too much. I think you have to approach the conversation the same way, which is to have an interesting conversation that people would want to watch. If it’s not interesting, it’s most certainly my fault.

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